Entries in Rick Santorum
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Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Despite the efforts of Susan G. Komen to begin to repair its reputation, some people are still angry at the foundation. Here, a small group of women recently protested outside of Komen’s office in Dallas. (Rex C. Curry / Associated Press)Eve Ellis, who served on the Susan G. Komen board of directors for six years and works now as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in New York issued a private letter that wound up being published by the Guardian UK.

The letter is devastating, writes theLA Times, calling for the founder of the Susan J. Komen breast cancer philanthropy Nancy Brinker to resign. Writing that there is no doubt that Komen’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood was political, she then “dings Brinker for her links to the George W. Bush administration and for recently hiring Ari Fleischer, Bush’s former White House press secretary, for help on crisis communication. Then the big guns come out as she calls for Brinker to resign, the board to be replaced, and vice president Karen Handel to be fired.” (Note, Handel resigned on Tuesday.)

“They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the the guillotine.”

More DFR

(Excerpt) America is much more like the Arab world in our thinking about women.

Do you know that in Utah, both houses moved in 2010 to make miscarriage a felony in the state? If a woman slipped on ice in winter, her husband could have her imprisoned for not wearing proper shoes and causing the miscarriage with her negligence. Only the governor’s veto kept this legislation from passing.

In South Dakota last year, legislators worked on a law to make it justifiable homicide for a man to shoot his wife if she assisted her daughter in ending a pregnancy. Insanity has taken over the demand of American men that they control women’s bodies. And there is no end to the new legislation in sight.

Under the weight of your controversy over me, Bro. Dennis, I’ve had to return to my own inner psychological roots, locking down the essence of my own identity and principles. This fight for me as a good woman of honor comes at a time when the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood problem is the topic of every Republican candidate for president, along with the new argument that birth control shouldn’t exist for women in America, says Santorum. It’s too dangerous for our health. Romney will reverse himself on birth control, like he’s reversed every other position in his career. I am terrified of Republicans, because they will hunt down women all over America.

Talking Points Memo weighs in on the new Republican war on contraception, writing that pro-choice Republicans are begging the party to pull back from the building fight over contraception before it’s too late.

“I think this week’s outrage over the Komen decision should be a warning to the Republican party about how quickly there was a mass outrage over further and further attacks on general women’s health,” Kellie Ferguson, executive director of Republican Majority for choice, told me Wednesday. “You could see the same backlash on attacks on contraception.”

Pandering to the extreme wing of social conservatives will take the party down a path to disaster warns Ferguson. A majority of Americans and a majority of Catholics support the White House decision on offering contraception in the insurance package for Catholic institutions like hospitals and universities. 28 states already mandate exactly what is contained in the new federal plan.

“How are we going to punch him every fucking day in the face with the best fucking message that is going to drive voters in our favor?” he asks. The face in question is that of President Barack Obama. “How do we do it nationally? How do we do it in the states? How do we do it over and over and over? We’re not going to win the fight with a knockout punch; we’re going to win it with kidney blows that make your opponent so feeble that he can no longer raise his hands to cover his face.”

If mostly men have been at war in America’s just-say-no Congress, our citizens have another 10 months of extra-ultra ugliness to prepare for, writes Joe Hagan. With more money rolling in this campaign than ever before — thanks to the Supreme Court’s overturn of ‘Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission’ — corporate, union and rich people’s super-PACs are “effectively mini-campaigns, employing more pollsters, more researchers, and more ad-makers for the purpose of going negative against the opposition—every fucking day.”

We’ve already heard the line countless times in the last week. A super-PAC smears blood all over an opposition candidate, and the Republican says “Not my decision; I have nothing to do with these people.”

Aung San Suu Kyi Interview

Aung San Suu Kyi . Photograph by Frederic de la Mure/AFP/Getty Images.Lally Weymouthinterviews Burma’s Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for Slate. Released from her house arrest of six years, the woman who leads Burma’s reform movement now welcomes high-level foreign guests, most recently US Secy of State Hillary Clinton.

Asked if President Thein Sein’s reform process is real, the petite warrior for the people answers affirmatively, but adds a caveat. The president has limited powers, and the military can take over at any time. The real question is whether or not Myanmar’s military powers support reform.

Asked whether she is likely to run for president in the 2015 elections, Aung San Suu Kyi replies: “I don’t want to be president, but I want to be free to decide whether or not I want to be President of this country.”

We have reregistered our party. I went to register myself as a candidate this morning. We have started campaigning around the country. People have been very enthusiastic. It is very encouraging—all these years and they are still standing solidly behind us.

The interview closes with a personal tribute back to Desmond Tutu, who expressed his lavish appreciation of Aung San Suu Kyi on Charlie Rose, in a September 2011 interview during the Clinton Global Summit.

I am a great admirer of Desmond Tutu. I like quoting his words that he believes in reformative rather than retributive justice. I think he means it and I mean it, too. I don’t like putting even animals in cages. I would hope that people should be treated with dignity whatever they have done.

As for Hillary Clinton, Myramar’s opposition leader says: ” Yes, she is very nice and very intelligent. I like intelligent people.” Readentire in-depth interview at Slate

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Associated Press - Birth control is displayed at manufacturing plant.The Obama Administration refused to grant church-affiliated organizations a pass on the mandate requiring church-affiliated organizations to offer their workers coverage of birth control as part of their health plans. But the administration did grant them an additional year to comply, writes theWashington Post.

The decision almost caught pro-women organizations off guard, given the Obama administration’s history of mixed signals on supporting women’s rights. Organizations including The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals lobbied ferociously for a broad exemption for any organization opposing birth control on religious grounds. Based on the Republican party’s frontal attack on women’s rights, most women’s groups assumed Obama would again cave.

The delay was no consolation to Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” he said. “The Obama administration has now drawn an unprecedented line in the sand.”

Posted on our new Anne of CarversvilleFacebook page,Dov Linzer, an Orthodox rabbi who is the dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, weighs in on both the women’s modesty issue and controlling women’s bodies.

We’ve been following the explosive loss of women’s rights in Israel, most recently with eight-year-old Naama Margolese living in Jerusalem’s Beit Shemesh neighborhood, being vilified and called a whore for not dressing modestly enough for school. Note, that Naama was in fact dressed very modestly, just not modestly enough for these ultra-Orthodox men.

Dov Linzer writes the question that is at the core of Anne of Carversville: “Is it possible for a religious demand for modesty to be about anything other than men controlling women’s bodies? From recent events in Israel, it would certainly seem that it is not.”

No one suggests that the investigation of American nuns is over, but it’s noteworthy that on Jan. 4, Cardinal Franc Rode resigned as head of the Vatican’s ‘cabinet office’, the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, that deals with religious orders, including nuns worldwide.

Writing for Huffington Post, American nun Maureen Fiedler says that Cardinal Franc Rode is an arch-conservative with an archaic view of religious life that resonates with the 18th century, rather than the 21st.

When the Vatican announced its ‘investigation’ of all active orders of US nuns in 2009, a ‘doctrinal investigation’ of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the organization representing the collective leadership of about 90 percent to 95 percent of all nuns in the United States, was also on the list.

These investigations came out of the clear blue sky, without any allegations of wrongdoing that usually prompt official probes. And they brought howls of protest from nuns themselves and many in the laity. Typical was the comment of a friend of mine: “Now … let me get this straight. Some priests committed sex abuse. Bishops covered it up. And so they’re investigating nuns?” The investigation of nuns has nothing to do with sex abuse, of course, but that scandal led some to ask if this is an attempt to deflect attention away from the sex abuse debacle.

Simply stated, the vast majority of American nuns refused to comply with the investigation, including returning their surveys.

Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Anne Sinclair and husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn‘Le Huffington Post’ French edition, launching in partnership with the newspaper Le Monde, will be led by Anne Sinclair, the well-known TV journalist in France and wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Under her new title of ‘editorial director’, Sinclair told Elle France, via the New York Times:

‘‘I am very happy to resume my career, amid the euphoria of taking part in something new. I think I still have something to bring to the profession.’’

Sinclair is a wealthy heiress, formerly the host of a popular television interview program during the 1980s and ’90s. She gave up her position in 1997 when Mr Strauss-Kahn became finance minister of France.

‘‘I am neither a saint nor a victim,’’ Sinclair told Elle, when asked about her continuing support for her husband, who is under fire still for his sexual laisons . ‘‘I am a free woman.’’

‘‘Unconditional support does not exist,’’ she added. ‘‘One supports if one has decided to support. Nobody knows what happens in a private relationship, and I deny anyone the right to judge mine. I am comfortable with my decisions, my actions, I made them independently.’’

Year One Dilma Rousseff

With an approval rating of 72 percent, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff proved that “a technocrat who never worked as an elected official coule step out of her predecessor’s shaw and achieve success on her own terms.”

Dilma Rousseff has strengthened ties with the United States and was the first woman to address the opening session of the United Nations. Read on at Americas Society - Council of the Americas

Evolutionary biologists have long wondered how more than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth’s surface begann forming multicellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.

Deciding to pursue the question, the two scientists found the answer in their first experiment, writesScience Daily.

“To understand why the world is full of plants and animals, including humans, we need to know how one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multicelled organisms,” said Sam Scheiner, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology. “This study is the first to experimentally observe that transition, providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago.”

Ga State Rep Kip wants all Georgia welfare recipients to take a drug test. Alas, Kip was arrested last week, driving his fast-moving Jaguar through a red light. Denying that he had been drinking at breakfast time, Kip failed the ‘intoximeter’ test, the ‘walk and turn test’ and standing on one leg.

The question then comes, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’ ” Johnson’s email said.

Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall (R) threw his hat into Virginia’s senate race yesterday, educating Anne on his views that God punished women who have had abortions by giving them disabled children. Still reeling from yesterday’s revelation of Karen Santorum’s 5-6 year live-in relationship with an abortion doctor, Anne asks if Marshall really means to suggest that …

What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

This is NotCot’s landing page today, a tribute to the many websites participating in the anti-SOFA “defend our freedom to share” the Internet day. The way NotCot is organized, we can’t send you to a replication of this screenshot image. But this SOPA link on NotCot brings up a host of participating organizations.

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